Flourishing together within the love of God. As an inclusive and caring church school, we aim to provide an excellent education and develop a lifelong love of learning. We see all members of our school family as valued and valuable in the eyes of God, and we support and challenge everyone to achieve their full potential.  “I come to bring life in all its fullness” (John 10:10)

 

EYFS Curriculum

Intent

The curriculum in Early Years is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils. It facilitates them to gain the skills, knowledge and understanding, as they start out on their educational journey, supporting them to progress from their individual starting points and preparing them to flourish in the next stage of their education. We want the children to be confident, independent and resilient learners who are supported in achieving their full potential and flourish as individuals.

Our ethos in Early Years is to support children’s personal, social and emotional development so that they feel safe and secure and are ready to learn. Our school values are embedded in all that we do and the children are active participants in discussing and identifying when these values are being shown.

Through the seven areas of learning we provide topics that excite and engage children, building on their own interests and developing their experiences of the world around them. We recognise that all children come into our setting with varied experiences and all staff work hard to ensure that the learning opportunities provided widen their knowledge and understanding of the world, setting ambitious expectations for all children.

The whole school curriculum, with six key learning journeys, celebrates diversity and supports the pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Those children with particular needs, including SEND, are supported appropriately allowing them to be successful.

 

 Implementation

At Fiskerton C of E Primary School, we offer a curriculum which is broad and balanced and which builds on the knowledge, understanding and skills of all children, whatever their starting points. We follow the Early Years curriculum using  themes and enrichment opportunities that are linked to those of the rest of the school and provide the foundations for further learning and development.

The aim of our curriculum is to develop a thirst and love for learning, that will be lifelong, by:

Carefully planning sequences of activities that provide meaningful learning experiences, developing each child’s characteristics of learning.

Providing high quality interactions with adults that demonstrate and impact on the progress of all children.

Using high quality questioning and interactions to check understanding and address misconceptions.

Staff acting as role models to the children they teach in order for children to develop their own speaking and listening skills.

Carefully assessing, through observations, which are recorded on tapestry and shared with parents. These are used to inform the next steps of learning and meet individual needs.

Developing an effective and engaging environment that is set up so that children can access all areas of learning both inside and outside at any one time.

Providing activity starting points for child initiated activities that enhance children’s learning and impact on progress.

Allowing children to be successful in their attempts at an activity and using effective feedback to help facilitate next steps in learning.

Suggesting home learning opportunities with information about what has been taught, allowing parents to build on their child’s school experiences, at home.

We recognise the changing needs and interests of our pupils and we are responsive to this, regularly developing existing themes

The English curriculum is taught in a variety of ways in EYFS. Children develop their literacy skills by the imitation of stories that they learn using actions and story mapping techniques. Children also have the opportunities to show independence in their writing by planning and writing their own stories and by writing lists, captions and letters, where appropriate. They have opportunities to experience a range of text types and explore these through whole class and small group activities including guided and shared reading. Literacy opportunities are also promoted in many of the continuous provision activities available to children during the week.

We often use a story as a basis for theme planning and usually start with an exciting hook to engage children in both the theme and the book. The books chosen range from traditional tales and those the children are familiar with to new and modern texts with a view to promoting reading for pleasure.

Phonics is taught daily through short phonics sessions following Little Wandle Letters and Sounds scheme of learning. WHen the children have a knowledge of some sounds and are beginning to blend they are given a reading book that matches their current knowledge and they take part in three reading sessions a week, focusing on decoding, prosody and comprehension

The maths curriculum is taught through daily dedicated sessions. These sessions are carefully planned using concrete resources and build on prior learning and real life experiences across the theme and year. This starts with mastering numbers 0-5 and then progresses through to 0-10 and 0-20. We want our children to become confident mathematicians who can apply what they have learnt to real life experiences.

Weekly Forest School sessions are run for children in early years; these support a range of skills and develop their social interactions. All seven areas of learning are encompassed within these sessions and allow all children to take risks in an unpredictable environment whilst developing leadership skills and promoting mental health and wellbeing. We call our sessions ‘Forest Friday’ and aim to get the children outside in all weather.

Pupils have opportunities to share their learning with their parents and carers through Tapestry and to build on learning at home. We have a twitter account where children’s learning and successes are celebrated.

Impact

Children demonstrate high levels of engagement in activities, developing their speaking and listening skills, enabling them to access more areas of the learning and communicate to both adults and children. Children develop skills across all areas of the curriculum including literacy, mathematics and physical development using these in different ways.

Children have developed a wider sense of the world around them and can draw on these experiences during interactions with others and link this to new learning.

Children develop their characteristics of learning and are able to apply their knowledge to a range of situations making links and explaining their ideas and understanding. Children are confident to take risks and discuss their successes and failures with adults drawing on their experiences to improve or adjust what they are doing.

From their own starting points, children will make excellent progress academically and socially, developing a sense of themselves so that they are well prepared for Key Stage 1.